The Solution is a Green Dot

Imagine a map of the United States – the same map we have seen in many movies, where they discuss an outbreak occurring and show small red dots for each new case found of the disease. As you watch the map, you see red dots continue to appear as new cases are identified.

Now imagine that the map is the University of Dayton campus. And instead of each red dot representing a new case of disease, each red dot represents a moment of violence in our community. Every time someone uses their words to harass someone else, chooses to have sex without asking for consent, or stalks another person, a new red dot appears on our map.

There is no way to know how many red dots are on our campus map. But we do know that there are too many. Too many members of our community have been affected by power based personal violence, including sexual assault, stalking, harassment, bullying, hazing, and domestic violence.

You can stop the red dots. Help us make green dots.

A green dot is any choice, behavior, word or attitude that promotes safety for everyone and makes our community safer. A green dot is intervening on a Friday night when something doesn’t feel right, hanging an awareness poster in your room or office, tweeting your support for survivors, hearing a victim-blaming statement and responding instead of ignoring it, talking to a friend about why this issue is important to you, writing a paper or doing a presentation on violence prevention, organizing a training for your student group, or removing your friend from a high risk situation. A green dot is any decision you make to make our community safer.

There is no way to know how many green dots we need in order to drown out the red. But every green dot matters. And when we all add our green dots to our campus map, slowly we will overpower the red dots. We will make our campus community safer. But we can’t do it without you. Nobody has to do everything, but everyone has to do something. What’s your green dot?